- Provide you with a dedicated solicitor or lawyer to work on your matter
- Identify legally appointed estate representatives and beneficiaries
- Accurately identify and draft the court documents you require
- Arrange for appropriate notifications
- Obtain relevant documents to prepare an account to HMRC
- Obtain a Grant from the court
- Sell/transfer assets
- Pay debts from estate funds
- Prepare estate accounts
- Distribute to the beneficiaries
Average timescales: On average, if there is no property to sell, no Inheritance Tax liability and we are instructed to write to asset holders and other third parties, all of the liabilities and beneficiaries are established and over the age of 18 with no age contingency the estate could be dealt with within approximately 9 – 12 months. Broken down it will take about 20 to 22 weeks to get the Grant, 6 – 8 weeks to deal with assets (depending on the requirements of the beneficiaries) and around 4 – 8 weeks to prepare estate accounts for approval and subsequently distribute to the beneficiaries. The timescale will be longer for example, if there are tax complications, if there is a property to sell or if there is a potential financial claim against the estate but your dedicated staff member will be able to advise you.
Fees: We will charge pro-rata of the hourly rate of the dedicated staff member. Our hourly charge out rates will vary from £170 to £270 plus VAT at the prevailing rate currently 20%. We do not usually charge a fixed fee or percentage uplift for our estate work. We will provide you with a definitive estimate of costs at the outset once we have established the full extent of the work you would like us to do. There is a wide range of likely costs which will start simply from an estate representative asking us to do very little such as just make an application to the court for a Grant which will take around 4 to 5 hours right up to executors coming to the office with lots of carrier bags full of asset information for an estate with an inheritance tax liability, lots of beneficiaries and keys to the property they require us to clear, which could be 30 hours plus. We don’t wish for our information on our website to be misleading which is why your dedicated staff member will provide you with a full written quote before beginning work. There is no obligation to instruct us to proceed until the written quote is agreed. Some of our solicitors and lawyers may prefer to offer a free initial meeting for a fixed time to establish the initial information before providing a quote. If the initial quote is likely to change during the usual course of business such as a new asset or beneficiary comes to light during the estate administration or you wish for us to do more work than was originally quoted for then we will provide you with a further estimate before the additional work begins.
Likely disbursements (payments to third parties):
- Court fee for the Grant is £300 plus £1.50 per sealed copy
- £2.40 per UK bankruptcy search
- Overseas bankruptcy searches could be in the region of £75-£150
- £3 – £9 Land registry search for a copy of the ownership register held by the Land Registry
- £250 for notifications (for protection against unexpected claims from unknown creditors)
- Affidavit statement(s) have a ‘swear fee’ of £5 plus £2 per exhibit
